Uncle Volodya says, “That’s the thing you learn about values: they’re what people make up to justify what they did.”

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

– John F. Kennedy, 20th Anniversary of The Voice Of America, February 26th, 1962

A nation that is afraid of its people. Once there would have been no doubt about who that was not, as witnessed by the statement above. And once upon a time, “western values” was an honest-to-goodness aspiration, not a punch line. But that was a long time before the boyish President spoke that probably-heartfelt confidence to young postwar America – a country that was growing so fast, both in its economy and its foreign influence, that you could almost feel the ground tremble beneath your feet.

How far do you want to go back? As the newborn Soviet Union began to think urgently about restarting production in a country ravaged by World War I and then three years of brutal and destructive civil war, it urgently needed western equipment and machinery to rebuild its shattered factories and to modernize, to move forward. The Soviet Union was on the gold standard, producing a gold coin called the Chervonets. It would pay in gold for modern machinery.

Except the west wouldn’t take it. Why not? Because a competing currency backed by gold reserves threatened the reach of an emerging financial empire dominated by the American dollar and the British pound sterling. The Chervonets disappeared, to be replaced by a rouble which was not backed by gold. The Soviet Union was then recognized by the west, and shortly thereafter, in 1925, it announced again its wish to accelerate industrialization, and to purchase western equipment and machinery. The west refused again to accept gold, and agreed the only mediums of exchange could be oil, timber and grain. In 1933 the west introduced the Russian Goods Import Prohibition Act. The only means of payment entertained – Soviet grain.

Stalin’s government was faced with a choice: either to give up restoring industry, so capitulating to the West, or continue industrialising, leading to a dreadful internal crisis. If the Bolsheviks took grain away from the peasants, there was the very great probability of a famine which, in turn, might lead to internal unrest and removal from power. So no matter what Stalin chose, the West would remain victorious. Stalin and his entourage decided to force their way through and stop at nothing.

You know what happened. The Holodomor, which Ukraine frequently refers to as a deliberate genocide of Ukrainians, although Ukraine was heavily agrarian – the breadbasket of the Soviet Union – and it stands to reason it was hardest hit.

1939-1945: another war. The Soviet Union was allied with the west against Nazi Germany and the Axis powers. As it ground to a bloody close, America was presented with an almost unbelievable set of circumstances, not long after The Voice of America celebrated in the quote above was just getting started. The war was over. Europe was devastated; much of its youth sleeping forever in the earth where they fell, its cities smashed and ruined, its factories and production facilities charred rectangular craters in the lunatic moonscape signature of relentless bombing. A weary and soul-shocked people turned their faces to rebuilding. But how?

America!!! Although the young United States had paid its dues in casualties and war dead, the country itself was untouched. Moreover, its factories and plants and manufacturing facilities were revved up and running at full-bore, accustomed to providing for a world at war. If America played its cards right, it could become the dominant world power for as far as the eye could see, and its allies would be beholden to it for their very existence.

And Germany. What should be done about Germany, the host of the Nazi cancer that had clearly intended to spread and spread if it had not been ripped out and stamped upon by the allies? That was a matter of no small concern to Stalin, because the USSR had borne the brunt of the crushing juggernaut of German metal and artillery and hate. Had mad Hitler not elected to open a second front, he might well have prevailed in Europe and been able to negotiate from a position of strength. But the USSR had paid a terrible price; more than 25 million dead, more than any country in the war, and some of its cities little more than smoldering piles of tumbled bricks. Obviously, the Soviets had not invited this. So who was going to pay for it?

The obvious answer was Germany, and the Potsdam Agreement gave the Soviet Union claim to 25% of German assets. The western allies were to get 75% to divide between them, and Germany was obviously going to get nothing. But somewhere along the line, the plan changed. As the reference points out, “the important point was that the absolute amount of that theoretical asset was within the discretion of the Allied Control Council to determine. Given the de facto acceptance of Soviet and Western spheres of influences, the Western Occupation Powers had the ultimate decision-making power in dividing up Germany industrial assets.” And the United States decided that the Soviet Union was trying to increase its own power at the expense of Germany; and, dash it, that just wasn’t fair. Unaccountably, Stalin declined an American offer to participate in The Marshall Plan, and contribute resources to rebuild Europe before the Soviet Union – incredibly unreasonable man. American leaders put it down to Stalin being reluctant to disclose just how much wealth the Soviet Union had.

Ambitions for Germany was the issue at which their paths divided. The Soviet Union wanted the rich industrial assets of the Ruhr, and considered itself entitled to them. The United States had other plans. Already, despite its wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, the USA was pondering how it could become the preeminent world power, and those plans did not include a potential rival. The USA had already determined that Germany – the former enemy whose Nazi ideology was denounced at Nuremberg – should be rebuilt as a counterweight to America’s erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union.

Even at this early juncture, the odd western reluctance to fully condemn Naziism – as if an ideology that could so powerfully motivate a nation could not be completely bad, and might even have its uses – was noticeable if you were looking for it. America had a prominent place at the Nuremberg Trials. Thomas Dodd – father of the present-day Chris Dodd, thirty-year United States Senator from Connecticut, who retired from politics only in 2011 – was a prosecutor at Nuremberg. His notes recount that Winston Churchill was opposed to the condemned Nazis even getting a trial, and favoured summary execution, and that the Soviets concurred. But at the opposite end of the spectrum was the senior American judge, Francis Biddle, the former U.S. Attorney-General whose resignation had been demanded by Truman earlier that year. Biddle, while still Attorney-General, had been publicly opposed to prosecution of the Nazis for crimes committed before the war. The two most famous quotes attributed to Biddle are, “I’m for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps“, and, prophetically indeed, “The Constitution has not greatly bothered any wartime president“. That curious reluctance to condemn Naziism would bear bitter fruit just this year, when the United States, accompanied only by Canada and Ukraine, opposed a Russian-sponsored UN resolution to ban glorification of Naziism. Indeed, some suggest the United States entered the war against the Nazis only to preserve and exploit an historic opportunity to dominate the world. United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes supported eugenics before the Nazi ideology did, finding in a 1927 decision, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind… Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” The Nazis actually quoted Holmes at Nuremberg, in their defense.

1990. The west, and especially Washington, wants a unified Germany under a single flag, and for a reunited Germany to join NATO. Such a reunited country, strategically situated and a major industrial power, will become the driving force of a new Europe. The Soviets were understandably nervous about NATO expansion. Did the west ever promise there would be no further NATO expansion eastward? Previously classified British and German documentation examined by Der Spiegel suggests “the West did everything it could to give the Soviets the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for countries like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia.” Moreover, German Foreign Minister (in 1990) Hans-Dietrich Genscher reassured the Soviet Union that the west “intended to cooperate with the Soviet Union in bringing about change, not act as its adversary.”

In the decade or so that followed, NATO added another 12 nations to its membership. “So what?” is the western attitude – we didn’t sign anything. In a re-election campaign speech in 1996, Bill Clinton announced, “NATO defended the West by deterring aggression. Even more, through NATO, Western Europe became a source of stability instead of hostility. France and Germany moved from conflict to cooperation. Democracy took permanent root in countries where fascism once ruled. I came to office convinced that NATO can do for Europe’s East what it did for Europe’s West: prevent a return to local rivalries, strengthen democracy against future threats, and create the conditions for prosperity to flourish. That’s why the United States has taken the lead in a three part effort to build a new NATO for a new era. First, by adapting NATO with new capabilities for new missions. Second, by opening its doors to Europe’s emerging democracies. Third, by building a strong and cooperative relationship between NATO and Russia.”

How’d that effort pan out? Adapting NATO with new capabilities for new missions? Check. Opening its doors to “Europe’s emerging democracies”? Check. Building a strong and cooperative relationship between NATO and Russia? Are you kidding? Who believed that?

Russia, heir to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact – at least inasmuch as it inherited all the Soviet Union’s debt – is the raison d’etre for NATO. No bogeyman to scare the kiddies with, and people will begin to ask, “Ummm….why do we spend so much on defense if we are surrounded by friends?”

Russia was finally admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO), in 2012, after trying for 19 years, and had to endure the humiliation of being lectured by the likes of U.S. Senator Bill Frist on Russia’s “disregard for human rights and the rule of law” just two months after the photographs of hapless and innocent prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib by American servicemen and CIA contractors hit the papers. But Chad, Niger, Sierra Leone, Mali and Burkina Faso – the world’s five poorest countries – were members of the WTO since the mid 90’s. Not to mention Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most repressive countries, where women are not allowed to do anything public without the attendance of a male relative. But Russia needed to crawl and beg for another seven years after Saudi Arabia was a member in good standing.

In 2013, the Kremlin proposed a meeting between representatives of the Eurasian Union and the European Union, on the possibility of Ukraine being a member – an interface, of sorts – of both. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso refused to even meet with the EAU representatives because he considered it a rival trading bloc. So instead Ukraine got Maidan and riots and a government of fascist ideologues and a cratering currency and the complete depletion of its financial reserves and a civil war, and lost Crimea.

And now Russia is in Syria, fighting alongside the Syrian government to roll back a determined and stubborn push by the west to unseat its democratically-elected leader using the vehicle of Islamic fundamentalist militias, which the United States has admitted to training, funding and arming. Over the past year the USA has also invited itself into Syria, ostensibly to conduct air strikes against the very same Islamic State which steadily advanced and continued to take more and more ground throughout the bombing campaign against it in which 75% of American planes returned from their missions without having dropped any bombs, because they could not get permission from their commands to engage. At the same time, the U.S. government provided vehicles to “moderate Syrian rebels” which were fitted with radio gear which would allow militia members to call in U.S. air strikes! A recent shamefaced admission by Washington revealed that there were only 4 or 5 militants remaining of those the USA had armed and trained at a cost of approximately $500 million; the rest had either been captured by al Nusra or had defected to it with their new weapons. Still Washington persists with the fiction that there is any such entity as the “Free Syrian Army”, although it collapsed in the spring and its remnants were absorbed into al Nusra, which is al Qaeda in Syria and a terrorist organization that tortures and executes prisoners. The west was ready to go with its activists’ casualty reports before the first Russian strike element was even wheels-up, and thus far the propaganda attempts have been clumsy.

Although Washington and its allies weep and tear their clothing with anguish over the deaths of Syrian civilians, a year ago Washington lifted the restrictions on U.S. air strikes in which civilians might be injured. Said U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger, “I did hear them say there were civilian casualties, but I didn’t get details…But nothing is perfect,” and whatever civilian deaths resulted from the U.S. strikes are “much less than the brutality of the Assad regime.”

Echoing that meme is the unbelievable statement from Human Rights Watch’s despicable Director, Kenneth Roth. He tweeted, “Kunduz attack is awful, but recall that Assad attacks hospitals deliberately all the time”. The occasion on which he was commenting was an airstrike by American coalition aircraft on the hospital of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The USA quickly shifted the blame to Afghan authorities, who were alleged to have said 10-15 Taliban fighters were hiding in the building or compound in which it was located.

First, there is no evidence that Assad’s government forces have ever attacked a hospital deliberately, not even once, never mind “all the time”. The tweet was quickly deleted, but screen caps remain so that he cannot deny he said it. And this is symptomatic of the knee-jerk excusing by western policymakers of every western atrocity perpetrated in war over the last couple of decades – unfortunate, but let’s keep our perspective, people: remember, the animals we are fighting do this ten times before breakfast. Second, what the hell kind of control is that? When Afghanistan speaks, you better jump; yuk, yuk, yessir, boss. If Afghanistan calls in an airstrike by U.S. aircraft, don’t you check to see what they asked you to bomb? Especially since the coordinates of the hospital had been transmitted several times to military authorities? If Afghan authorities called in an airstrike on the U.S. Embassy and said it was justified because a dozen terrorists were hiding in the building, would you roll in and bomb it flat?

Predictably, the best NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg – who was nearly dancing with rage just yesterday over supposed Russian violations of Turkish national airspace and flinging himself about uttering all kinds of threats – could come up with on the hospital disaster was that he was “deeply saddened“. No condemnation of the perpetrators, no fervent promises of a detailed investigation…

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?” ; Martin Luther King. “It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it”; Eleanor Roosevelt. “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government”; Thomas Jefferson. Somewhere along the rocky road of human progress, the west lost its way. Values still exist on an individual basis; very much so, and western citizens are among the world’s most caring and compassionate. But on a national level, both integrity and values are just words used – like “freedom” and “democracy” – to justify forcing our way of life on others for the gain of our own exclusive club. How disappointed our forbears quoted above would be, to see what we have become. If anyone saw the future of western society clearly, it was George Orwell.

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

Hilarious!
Thank God true patriots continue to carry the torch; M-me Chirikova, for one.
T’was a dark and stormy night (probably), and she was taking a recreational bicycle ride in Old Tallinn shouting ‘Glory to Ukraine’ (fact). One thing led to another, and she spent quality time with a bunch of ‘anti-terrorism warriors’ from the Azov battalion:
“I was deeply moved by the readiness with which Ukrainians are prepared to die for their motherland. They spoke about death with shining eyes and a smile; for them to die for the Motherland is a bliss.”
And so deep her epiphany was that on behalf of all Russians whom she obviously represents she pledged to beg for the Ukrainians’ forgiveness, although unlike the Jews who forgave the Germans she was not convinced the Russians deserved such benevolence.http://activatica.org/blogs/view/id/1243/title/vstrecha-s-ato

“I was deeply moved by the readiness with which Ukrainians are prepared to die for their motherland. They spoke about death with shining eyes and a smile; for them to die for the Motherland is a bliss.”

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfried Owen, fell November 4th, 1918, one week before the WWI armistice.

““I was deeply moved by the readiness with which Ukrainians are prepared to die for their motherland. They spoke about death with shining eyes and a smile; for them to die for the Motherland is a bliss.””

Huh. I see – they have found a true idealogical “pobratims” in the ISIS jihadists then. Indeed – what a bliss it would be to die for the Svidomite State (SS)! 75 tons of salo, 40 crates of gorilka and personal Bandera to worship!

Or, probably, the life in Free and Independent Ukraine is so bad right now after the “Revolution of Dignity”, that the death looks appealing.

“Private jets linked to the business empire of current Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his partners Igor Kononenko and Oleh Gladkovsky helped evacuate the Donetsk elite allied to exiled president Viktor Yanukovych from Kyiv, following a massacre of opposition protestors on February 20, 2014, according to a bne IntelliNews investigation.

While Ukraine froze in horror in the hours after the Maidan violence on February 20 last year that left up to 50 dead in murky circumstances, one business sprung into action: Ukraine’s market for VIP flights. A horde of cronies of Yanukovych followed their leader’s flight from Kyiv to their stronghold in Donetsk or to their luxury retreats abroad, ironically with many of them leaving Kyiv on private jets operated by the Ukrprominvest empire, which was founded by Yanukovych’s successor, President Poroshenko, together with his partners Kononenko and Gladkovsky.”

Bashar Asad at the Kremlin: Were it not for Russian help, terrorism would be everywhere now

The Syrian President has arrived in Moscow to discuss with Putin the political future of the region

An Express visit of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Moscow on Tuesday evening has confirmed that Russia is the main ally of the Syrian Republic in the fight against international terrorism and for a political settlement in the region…

The President [V.V.Putin] once again explained the motivations of Russia in Syria:

“The attempts of international terrorism to gain control of significant territory in the middle East, to destabilize the situation in the region are the legitimate concerns in many countries of the world“, said Putin.

“And this worries us in Russia, bearing in mind that, unfortunately, on Syrian territory, there are fighting against government troops armed forces who are natives of former Soviet republics and whose numbers are in the region of at least 4,000. And of course, we cannot have them turning up on Russian territory having gained combat experience and undergone indoctrination.

Tell Kerry that and most US citizens!

Syria is in Russia’s “backyard”.

It would be expecting too much, of course, to expect that many realize that in the USA or even care.

They damn well care if they even think that they perceive a whiff of socialism in Central American republics, though.

The United Fruit Company cared about the threat of demands for a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work being implemented on Central American pineapple plantations to have the US Marine Corps dispatched “to restore order” and prevent insurrection, as General Smedley Butler of the US Marine Corps clearly pointed out in his book “War is a Racket”, and maintain the high profitability of their product.

She looks like she had her head choppped off by Edward Husqvarna-Hands, and sewed back on by Mrs. Nelson’s Grade 3 Junior Crafts class. In a world where you can find pictures of even Angela Merkel naked, if that’s your fancy, I’d bet money there are no pictures of Leddy Ashton in her birthday suit. Not any later than infancy, anyway.

The TV series “Girl from Lvov”, which tells the story of four Ukrainians who come to Warsaw in search of a better life, has became the hit of the current TV season in Poland.

On Sundays more than 3.5 million Poles (almost every 10th inhabitant of the country) turn on the First National TV channel TVP to empathize with four young Ukrainian women who have illegally set themselves up Warsaw flats and are trying to find happiness.

The series has hit record ratings and is surprising Polish television critics. Many of them don’t understand what has caused such a stir, accusing the writers of the series of portraying stereotypes, reports Deutsche Welle.

Dear me; what happened to Merkel the Superhero, Merkel the only European leader wit the heart of a lion, Merkel; the worthy successor to Lady Iron-Balls Thatcher? The bloom seems to be well and truly off the rose. Mind you, to be fair, this is how Europe sees her – despite The Weekly Standard’s best efforts, most Americans still view her as a cross between Solomon and Optimus Prime. During Farage’s speech she looked like a murderer in the dock who has been told by her lawyer to show no facial expression whatsoever, lest the jury seize upon it as a signal of guilt.

Who in hell sized that guard? He would be doubling around the parade square carrying two tin buckets of sand for a week if I were in charge. Sizing is a mathematical drill procedure that dresses military personnel in a formation off so that when viewed from the front, the two tallest are at either end and the rest gradually dip toward the middle with the shortest in the middle. This gives the formation a pleasing and orderly appearance – not like that hodgepodge which looks like they all just rushed into line two minutes before Jinping arrived.

Published on 20 Oct 2015
Chinese President Xi Jinping was met with pomp and pageantry as he kicked off his four-day tour of the UK, the first visit by a Chinese leader to the country in a decade and one which is expected to lead to billions of pounds in trade and investment deals.

“I would like to make a small suggestion to the American politicians: the next time you decide to speak out for the “beleaguered” Russian “liberals”, remember that you are speaking out for a group of sexists who would fail any decent political correctness test and who would create a real shitstorm in the media were they allowed to make pronouncement on anything other than the awfulness of Putin regime.

I’ve been meaning to write about the sense of self-righteousness that pervades the “liberal” camp in Russia (Notice how I’m always using quotation marks around this word? Well, it’s because for the greater part the Russian “liberals” have nothing to do with true liberalism) for quite a while, but this week the story presented itself. The story stars a “liberal journalist” Sergei Parkhomenko, a buxom presenter from the regional affiliate of the “liberal” Echo of Moscow radio station and a whole assortment of Parkhomenko’s readers. Here goes.

A few days ago Mr. Parkhomenko discovered the Facebook page of a woman named Erica Ever. Both her userpic and her cover photo present a well-endowed lady wearing a bright red dress with a plunging neckline. Her information says that she works as an “author and anchor” at Echo of Moscow. Judging from the latest public post that was grabbed by the screenshot, she has a penchant for bad poetry. Those three things allowed Mr. Parkhomenko to pass a quick judgment and to post the screenshot of the Facebook page along with the snarky commentary stating “We are all in safe hands now.” He also tagged a number of female Echo staffers in the first comment telling them that now they will learn “how [bad] the things can be” and how the new anchor will make them cry and remember the previous Echo boogie-woman Lesya Ryabtseva with fondness. The post was shared 101 times, with only a small share of reposters critical of Parkhomenko’s sexist approach. The comments in the original post also provide a good insight into the psyche of a Russian “liberal.” Of course, there were a number of people who tried to shame the journalist for his misogynic views, but the majority of the commentators enjoyed the opportunity to make all sorts of lewd and raunchy jokes and decry the falling standards of the radio station whose journalists and anchors, it seems, all have to be buttoned-up spinstresses and liberal machos. Mr. Parkhomenko’s “I’m-so-full-of-myself-but-you-can’t-really-accuse-me-of-anything” commentary was expanded and expounded by Denis Dragunsky, another “liberal”, but this time a writer, not a journalist. In his Facebook post Mr. Dragunsky basically said that Ms. Ever has no one else to blame for the reaction that she produced, because her self-representation is simply “not adequate” to the position that she holds. Once again, it seems, that these people believe that a news-and-talk-show “liberal” radio station can only be staffed by people who hide their looks for fear of distracting the listeners. “

{…}

“…The smaller, but no less important problem, is the ability of the Russian “liberals”/creative class to compartmentalize. With the “liberals”, the most important thing is to be rukopozhatny, handshake-worthy. In today’s Russia this primarily means the unyielding criticism of the existing “bloody” regime. As long as this is something that you do, all of your possible shortcomings will be forgiven. So what if you’re an asshole? You are our kind of asshole. With the creative class, the most important thing is to be a “good guy.” As long as you are that, you can be mean to some other people, swindle others of large sums of money, fail at everything you do. You are the “good guy” and people will forgive you. But that’s another story, waiting to be told. “

It is a sad but true rule of thumb that many of the women who rant and rave about sexism have a face that looks like a picture of a bootprint, and Marina Pustilnik is no exception. Make no mistake – there is no excuse for deliberate mistreatment of women, or of anyone else. But there is something about huge tits that makes men say stupid things. The lady in question is actually very attractive in a zaftig kind of way, but that’s as may be. Militants like Pustilnik use “sexism” as a battering-ram against those who would otherwise either mock or ignore her; women who are furious that being bright does not buy you as much attention as being pretty. But you don’t dare ignore her, because it makes you a sexist. So you have to settle for treating her like picking up a cactus with your bare hands, because gender lexicon does not allow – if you are a man – for treating an unattractive woman exactly as you would treat a man, because she’s not. Whoopty-doo; colour me sexist.

For what it’s worth, she’s right that anyone making rude comments on the woman’s appearance should shut up. Every woman is entitled to dress and present herself in a manner she thinks makes her look her best. Except for Leddy Ashton. Everyone is free to make fun of her based purely on her looks.

I’ve noticed those same militant women don’t think anything of making fun of men as a group for how stupid or socially inept they are. And that’s true of some, innit? But not all.

I think, the value of this article is in that it allows us, primitive kolorads a glimpse into a fabulous and marvelous World of Handshakability. I.e. – into a jar with spiders, who are actually the “intellectual” and “creative class” opposition to the “Bloody Regime”. It shows how easily they can start flinging feces at each other with no help from Putin’s agents provocateur. Moreso – it shows how all theirs (officially proclaimed) “Common Human Values” – so, ah, “valued” in the West – are only skin-deep and no one truly believes in them.

We are also shown the old truth about “Hell hath no fury…”, and that “feminist scorned” can easily bring into light all liberastian dirty laundry – no matter how unhandshakable and harmful for the “Cause” it could be.

Miriam Elder thought nothing of flying her dry cleaning to the United States to have it done, because it was quicker and cost no more than having it done in Moscow – or so she said, although she probably imagined she was being funny. She probably has lots of connections through which you could fly in cheesy goodness from New Yawk. I imagine you are still allowed to import cheese in gift quantities for your own personal use if you have that kind of money. And what’s the point of being a kreakl if you can’t lord it over the ignorant nose-picking peasantry?

As regards those home grown and eternal critics of all things Russian who have latched onto the debasement of some Russian produced cheeses by the addition of palm oil and who mostly, I should imagine, those who yearn to live in the free West, may I remind them of what a Russian food lab chief at Wimm-Bill-Dan once told me the other year as regards the content of McDonald’s milk-shakes (they call them “milk cocktails” here, which is more accurate a description, I think), namely that they consist of 80% palm oil, milk “solids”, i.e. powdered milk, sugar and flavourings. Add water, stir it all up and voilà!.

I should also like to point out that the powers that be in Brussels once seriously considered to have British chocolate manufacturer Cadbury change the name of its product to “vegelate” as their product did not contain the stipulated minimum amount of chocolate as stipulated by the EU and consisted mostly of vegetable oil, i.e. palm oil.

I shall not venture into regaling to the interested reader the use and dangers of using inordinate amounts of corn syrup in US food production.

Andriy Parubiy comes to London and meets Lord Robertson, Chris Bryant (Labour), and Steve Pound (Labour) at Westminster. Steve Pound, MP for the quite Jewish area of London (Ealing), really should be ashamed of meeting the founder of the Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine.

I like his French; it is deliberate and clearly-enunciated and easy to understand. My teacher was from Saguenay-Lac St-Jean, and for me that region’s delivery is the hardest to grasp because they speak so fast and have such a strong accent. I imagine Trudeau grew up bilingual, and French purists will find his diction less emotional and perhaps a little sterile, but it is easy to grasp for those who speak it as a second language.

I don’t hold out much hope that anything major will change, because he will simply be deterred from making any changes that could hurt the fixers and their plans. But at least in the short term it is a repudiation of Harper’s disgraceful stand with Ukraine on the anti-Nazi resolution. Thinking of that later, mostly because of Astabada’s question on why Harper vested such loyalty in the Canadian Ukrainian diaspora, it is remarkable because Canada also – like the USA, although to nothing like the same degree – is influenced by a powerful Jewish lobby. Why they kept silent through that abomination I have no idea.

Just as with ISIS, NATO is quite happy supporting Ukrainian analogues, i.e. Banderite Nazis, as long as they aim their hate *and* action at Russia. Israel is supporting ISIS along with its US ally. So why should Jews worry about Ukrainian Nazis as long as they are furthering NATO’s agenda? Nobody is thinking of any blowback in the long term. All that everyone cares about is that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Actually the cups would be surgically attached to their backsides with a hole in the side (such as you see in that cup in the foreground to the left) for elimination purposes. They wouldn’t have to move at all, the hoverboard or hovercup would do it all for them.

Published on 21 Oct 2015
The sulking empire: Washington’s Syria policy lies in tatters with the Russian military making short order of illegal groups and other foreign-paid terrorists. The West’s so-called “moderates” are merely a rebranding trick. Today the Beltway political caste are no longer the wizards of the universe – should we cheer, or expect more irrational behavior from them?

CrossTalking with Hafsa Kara Mustapha, George Szamuely, and Sam Husseini.

Yeah, destruction of states and the creation of medieval toilets is just oh so clever on the part of the Americans and their friends and handlers. So, so, so clever. These arrogant pinheads never, ever take into account blowback. They think like uneducated hicks and make wild ass simplifications. I guess these toilets cannot have organized military industrial complexes and contribute to “anti-western” coalitions, but they are fertile grounds for problems such as disease. If you think that is silly, then consider AIDS.

And how do these clowns even know that no threat can emerge from the failed states they create? Are they planning on periodically bombing them back to the stone age to make sure? Really now, I have yet to see the USA come back for a toilet maintenance job. Iraq does not count since 1991 was a failure to remove Saddam. I don’t expect Gulf War III.

Yesterday 20:07In Sevastopol there have arrived 26 coffins containing the remains of Russian marines, according to information given the Intelligence Directory of the Ministry of Defence.

The bodies of 26 fallen servicemen have been delivered to Sevastopol from Syria. They were members of a 810-man strong brigade of marines who are part of the Russian Black Sea fleet shore troops….

Daily Telegraph: Pictures of the day: 8 May 2013Members of a Russian team that looks for the lost remains of Red Army soldiers killed while fighting against Nazi Germany’s forces during World War II take part in a reburial ceremony of the excavated soldiers remains outside Russia’s second city of St.Petersburg.

” Three Russians fighting alongside government forces have been killed in Syria, it was reported on Tuesday, in what would be the first Russian casualties since Moscow’s intervention in the war there began three weeks ago.

Pro-Syrian government military sources said three Russians were killed when shelling hit their positions near Latakia on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said.

Rami Abdulrahman, who heads the British-based observatory, said about 20 Russians were stationed at a position near Nabi Younis where the three were killed.

He said he believed that the casualties were volunteers fighting alongside Syrian forces, rather than regular Russian servicemen. “

Btw – how did they identify the 3 dead as Russians? Did they look like that?

And were refering to each other as “Ivan” while swinging vodka, playin’ balalayka and feeding their Big Russian Bear Mounts with the flesh of innocently killed moderate oppositionists from the Al-Nusra and ISIL?

“The Russian ministry of defence did not respond to requests to comment on Tuesday night. The Russian embassy in Damascus said it had no knowledge of the reported deaths.

Ruslan Leviev, a blogger who tracks Russian military activity in Ukraine and Syria, said his sources were unable to confirm the reports as of Tuesday evening.”

Well – as Everybody Knows ™, when Russia denies something this is admission of guilt. But the fact that rukopozhatnik and democratic Gusskiy journalist Leviev can’t confirm it thanks to his (khhhhhhhhh…., sorry – have to suppress laughter!) “sources” the Holy Truth of this claim – this is really something to be worried about.

But don’t worry! As the Western Free and Independent Media ™ managed to demonstrate all too often – half truths, omissions and unsourced blatant lies work just as fine when you have negatively charged zombified audience, ready to believe in any kind of crap about the Enemy.

Rami Abdulrahman, who heads the British-based observatory and is its only member except for activists in Syria, which he is not, said about 20 Russians were stationed at a position near Nabi Younis where the three were killed.

There must be something unique about the way the electromagnetic poles line up over Coventry, but Rami Abdulrahman has his thumb on the pulse of the world from there. Or you could choose to believe everything his fellow activists tell him is the truth. One is about as believable as the other.

” BAGHDAD — American and Kurdish commandos raided an Islamic State prison compound in northern Iraq, freeing at least 70 Kurdish captives and leaving one U.S. service member dead, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday.

It marks the first time a U.S. military member has been killed in a combat situation in Iraq since the United States began attacks against the Islamic State last year. “

Democratically elected president is sending troops to their deaths – in this age! Surely, during the blessed reing of Bush, Jr., this won’t have happened!

Clearly, one US soldier killed means that the new Vietnam is upon us, so the Senate should begin impeachment hearings immediately. Why, everyone already decided that Putin’s “Syrian Adventure” ™ will become his new Afghanistan!

I like this story from Colonel Cassad: in order to obey the law prohibiting communist place names, the good burghers of Krasnyi Liman (meaning red Liman) have voted to change the town’s name to Krasnyi Liman (meaning beautiful Liman). http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2442752.html

The explosions are eerily similar to a nuclear bomb explosion. Could be thermobaric warheads judging by the large and lingering fireballs. Russian tech is particularly advanced in this area. Referring to a very large Russian thermobaric device:
“”It contains about seven tons of high explosives compared with more than eight for the Moab but is four times more powerful because it uses a new type of explosive developed with the use of nanotechnology, according to the channel.”http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=1867

Those tools with the truck-mounted guns are firing at the same bearing and elevation over and over. Perhaps they are optimistic that an aircraft will fly into their bullets. What kind of plane stays still for that length of time? I didn’t even hear any aircraft – just them shooting. Idiots. Of course, they have plenty of ammunition and if they use it up the Americans will just airdrop them some more.

Not an expert on such matters but it seems that the Russian planes were flying low. An Su-25, sure, but one of the planes looked like one from the Su-27 series which should be way up there out of range of AA. Perhaps the pilots were saying (in Russian) “kiss my ass you mo-fo’s” and drawing fire for targeting purposes.

I didn’t watch it that far, all I saw was those morons shooting in the same direction over and over, and I did not see or hear any planes although it was obvious from the elevation that they were shooting at something well off the ground. All AA weapons realize their worst success rate against a crossing target because its aspect change is so rapid, and the best setup is when the aircraft is coming straight at you on a steady bearing. Of course, in such circumstances it is also more urgent that you hit it. But firing over open sights with a light machine gun like that offers only volume of fire as an advantage over throwing stones.

Just to clarify, I did see some fixed-wing fighters in the beginning of the clip, but there’s no way to know if that was even the same strike as the one in which the toerags are shooting up the sky.

I guess every mortgage holder in Canada and the USA should go and tell their lending institution that they are not going to put up with the blackmail of interest and principal payments. Let’s see how far they get before they are evicted from “their” homes.

That would be the 3-billion Eurobond Moscow took out which has to be paid if and when Ukraine’s debt-2-GDP ratio exceeded 60%, which it has done.

According to ZeroHedge (quoted at Russia Insider), the IMF is likely to consider this Eurobond to be sovereign debt and to pay it as part of a debt restructuring program. Taxpayers in the West will end up ultimately paying it off. No need for blackmail on Moscow’s part and once again Evil Lord Vlademort will be rejoicing that he has more money in petty cash to buy or build another humongous palace.

In this pornographic article, the Washington Post’s Adam Taylor reveals us that archeological looting in Syria is mostly due to the Islamic State (thank you Adam Taylor). However, the Kurds and Rebels have had their part too, not to mention the “Assad regime”, which even used heavy machinery.

The proof is provided by satellite images of the very same sites, showing evidence of excavations. No mention of the fact that the site of main looting under Government control, the Roman city of Apamea, has been under FSA control for more than one year before being liberated.

Following this logic, if the Syrian army regains ground in Palmyra, we should conclude that the “Assad regime” has looted that site too. Go ice bucket challenge yourself Adam Taylor.

Same thing happened in Iraq even after a bunch of US archaeologists begged Washington to save and guard the items in the National Museum of Iraq from looting in 2003. In addition the Iraq National Library and Archive was burned and most of its items lost. Yet the US could spare troops to guard the Ministry of Oil building.https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/04/muse-a16.html

I wonder if Breedlove is planning to go prancing about the battlefield in that outfit. Combat fatigues are meant to obscure your rank, because enemy snipers are eager for clues as to who is in charge so they can create chaos by rubbing out the leaders. Those big stars circling his head at the neckline are sort of a clue.

Yulia is an expert at the politics of division and at pretending to be something she is not – one of the people, suffering the same privations and indignities, shouldering the same burden. She’s good at identifying anyone who is going to be a problem, and turning them into the enemy so that their response makes her look like a victim. I doubt Washington has entirely given up hope that they can one day repackage her as the people’s champion.

According to the latest survey by VTsIOM, Putin’s popularity is now at a new record high of 89.9%!

As a stupid English woman said to me last July in the UK, after asking for and hearing my opinion of V.V.Putin: “But I should never have believed that you – you of all people! – would fall for the lying propaganda that Russians believe!”

She has never been to Russia and the only Russian she is acquainted with is Mrs. Exile, whom nobody in the UK ever takes for a Russian because she is a really happy, smiling, generous and friendly person, which really pisses me off.

The missus and the other ladies of the house returned yesterday from St Petersburg, and a joyous reunion it was. She told me there is a very strong and noticeable pro-Putin, pro-Russian atmosphere in Russia at present. Evidently virtue is its own reward. Obama is less popular than ever, despite all his eloquent speechifying about America’s gilded and moralist role in the battle of good against evil. Americans are not stupid. They know.

– Putin’s rating is in 60s – “Ha-ha! Putlo! The fall of regime is imminent!”
– Putin’s rating nearly 90% – “Oh, yeah!? Quadaffi’s rating was also high – and where is he now?! The fall of regime is imminent!”

I always wonder what dead and devout Muslim women do in paradise.I mean, what delights has Allah promised them?

That maniac in the video makes out that there’s not much room for deceased women in the Muslim paradise.

He says the men are going to be frantically busy tearing heavenly maidenheads, and devout, deceased Muslim wives will get a new one every morning – if they manage to get to heaven: a new maidenhead that is, not a new shagger.

And what’s this about breasts like pomegranates? I mean, pomegranates have a rough, course skin, don’t they? I can understand a fantasy comparison of a woman’s breasts to peaches, say, or watermelons if you are into monstrous bazookas – but pomegranates???

Sounds pretty boring, shagging round the clock day in, day out forever, anyway: anything gets boring if you do it eternally, I suppose.

Devout Muslim women are rewarded in paradise with twenty men who speak to them with obvious respect and only when their opinion is solicited, and otherwise occupy themselves with cleaning the place, looking after the children, making beds, cooking and serving meals and taking out the garbage.

I work with a lovely woman of the Islamic faith. She’s from Ufa, Bashkortostan. She’s a Bashkir and a Sunni Muslim. She doesn’t cover her hair and at work wears jeans, blouse and a cardigan whenever I see her (she’s a bookkeeper). She is widely travelled (she’s been to Canada a few times – has relatives in Toronto and likes the place) and is always happy and smiling. She believes in god. I don’t. I don’t mock her for her beliefs, but I can tell that she is a good, kind woman.

I’ll ask her what she expects to find in heaven if she should end up there.

The Muslim Heaven is conceived of as a paradise (Jannah) and it is only open to true believers on Judgement Day which will be in the future. In the meantime, dead Muslims stay in the grave.

The basic conditions for entering Paradise are that one believes in God and in all his messengers and prophets (which means one must believe in Abraham, his sons Isaac and Ishmael, and Jesus Christ as well as the Prophet Mohammad, because they are all God’s messengers and prophets), and in the Last Judgement; and that one performs good deeds. Even then, though a person may believe in God and all his prophets, accepts Mohammad as the last prophet, and performs good deeds, God still reserves the final judgement so it’s actually not for humans to assume that because they’ve done certain things, they automatically go into the express lane to Paradise.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jannah

Surah al Isra (Chapter 17, Verse 36)
“And do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge. Indeed, the hearing, the sight and the heart – about all those [one] will be questioned.”http://quran.com/17/36

In other words, people should not swallow whatever they’re told about Heaven, this being a matter that no-one can have any direct sensory knowledge of, because on the Day of Judgement they will be questioned by God about what they presume is their place in Paradise and their answers will inevitably be found wanting.

His source of information appears to be the Koran, texts of which he wails during the video clip in order to back up what he is preaching.

Are not Muslims to believe the words of their “Holy Scripture”, their book of “divine revelation”, as revealed verbally to Mohammed over a period of approximately 23 years, beginning on 22 December 609 CE when Muhammad was 40, and concluding in 632, the year of his death, by the big boss in the sky himself by means of the angel Gabriel?

Muslims are supposed to believe that the Koran was dictated to Mohammad by the angel Gabriel and that Mohammad wrote everything despite being, uh, illiterate. Bit unlikely seeing that at the time he was a camel trader married to a wealthy businesswoman, his first wife Khadijah, who was much older than he was and he would at least have been familiar with reading and writing accounts. The tricky issue though is whether those parts of the Koran dealing with what Muslims should believe in or what constitutes good conduct are contradictory or couched in such vague language that they can be interpreted in a hundred different ways. (I haven’t read any part of the Koran in English by the way, because I’ve heard that English translations can vary a great deal depending on whether the translator was sympathetic to Islam or not.)

So far much criticism of this article, probably soon to vanish down the black hole, e.g.

itsmerob: Not a shred of evidence or proof to who did this, yet, just like when the Malaysian airline was shot down, within hours, the blame was placed on Russia. This effort to turn public opinion against Russia is tiresome. When are we going to see some articles from The Guardian about Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Tukey arming and giving passage to the Terrorists? Or, the U.S and U.Ks parts to play in this. The U.K and the U.S are dripping with middle eastern blood, yet it’s Russia who are the bad guys. Shame on you Guardian. Seems to me that for The Guardian journalism is dead. It’s all about following the narrative eh Guardian?

The west is helpless to modify its approach because it does not know any other way. This is why I say Russia must stop with the pretense that they can ever be friends, and shut the west out of its trade and dialogue to the extent that is possible. Any friendly overtures the west might make are simply maneuvering for advantage.

Ironically, George W. Bush said it best:
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”

I offer for your attention this sad, sad and tearful article about a veritable pandemonium of international murderers, who’ve just wanted to come to the Ukraine and kill a Moskal or two… dozens… and now nobody wants them now!

Article is sooooo fantabulous, that some excerpts just beg to be quoted!

”In May 2014, Rudolph, then a 19-year-old student in Gomel, in eastern Belarus, saw a post on Facebook that inspired him. “This is not a war of Russia with Ukraine; this is a war between freedom and lawlessness,” wrote Semen Semenchenko, a prolific Facebook blogger and the commander of the Donbass Battalion, a volunteer paramilitary unit fighting against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The commander called on sympathetic Russians and Belarusians to come help their neighbor in its time of need, announcing that he was recruiting foreigners “who share our views and want to help.”

Rudolph took an academic leave from his university and left for Kiev. He signed up with Semenchenko’s battalion, which became part of the Ukrainian National Guard and assisted the Ukrainian Army in Luhansk and Donetsk, the two regions partially seized by rebels who declared independence. “I saw it as my duty to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression which spreads to all neighboring countries,” the lanky former computer science student told me last month. He worked in the battalion’s radio communications unit as Ukraine’s forces took back Artemivsk, Lisichansk, and other towns while losing vast territories along the Russian border last summer. The conflict is now frozen, a quagmire that has claimed 6,800 lives.

Now, months after he left the fighting, Rudolph is stuck in Kiev, living on friends’ couches. He still wears fatigues, with a pre-Soviet, red-and-white Belarusian flag patch sewed onto the sleeve. He is desperately trying to legalize his new Ukrainian life. The 90-day, visa-less stay that Ukraine allows Russians and Belarusians has long expired, and his participation in the Donbass Battalion has been leaked to the Belarusian KGB, a close ally of Moscow. He can’t go home.

[…]

Men answering the call trained with the National Guard, went through a background check, and pledged allegiance to Ukraine before they joined the fight. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov hailed them as heroes and promised them “fast-track citizenship” as they waited to be naturalized, according to Rudolph and other former volunteers. While their battalion became part of the National Guard, their individual paperwork was never fully processed by the government — which meant they received no pay and citizenship never came, but the men figured that the details would be sorted out later, after the separatists had been defeated.

“Finally, they pushed us out to the east without resolving this problem. We thought, ‘OK, we will go on to win and then raise this issue again. But in the end it so happened that the troops’ advance turned to withdrawal, then to a frozen conflict, and everyone without documents was basically purged into civilian life without any means of existence,” Rudolph told me as we sat in a café in downtown Kiev. He later went back to the front lines — but with a militia group that neither asked for nor promised him any official paperwork. But since returning, he’s been stuck.”

Oh, and that “militia group that neither asked for nor promised him any official paperwork” – shamefully, article’s authoress had to admit later, that it was the “Right Sektor”.

” “Once an entire company simply ran away from the sound of our own machine gun,” said Rudolph, recalling an incident in the winter, when he went back to the front lines briefly to join Right Sector — the only unit that would still take foreigners at that time. When Right Sector wasn’t fighting, its members fought against drinking in the army by raiding local shops and moonshine producers and dumping out alcohol.”

And I believe you, Rudik! I believe that Pravoseki were dumpint alcohol… inside their own throats! All in the name to save others from the alcoholism, of course.

But poor innocent Rudik is not along in his woeful situation:

” Sergei, a young Russian opposition activist from the city of Ulyanovsk who fought for the Shakhtarsk Battalion — a volunteer force answerable to the Interior Ministry which was later dissolved for looting — was stopped in Dnipropetrovsk in July and given orders to leave the country. Scared of going back to Russia, he headed back to the conflict zone, where last month he stepped on a mine and nearly lost his legs. Migration officials brought his deportation injunction to the hospital’s intensive care unit just as his friends were crowdfunding for his surgery on Facebook.”

Aaaaaaand that’s all you really need to know about “Russian opposition activists”. They live what they preach – rob, kill, get drunk, fuck the gees. Not necessary in that order.

”Yulia has found herself in a similarly tight spot. The petite 20-year-old, who goes by the nom de guerre Valkrie, left her home in southern Russia to join the Maidan demonstrations shortly after they broke out. Later, she fought for the Aidar Battalion, a nationalist volunteer group that fought in Luhansk and was made part of the Ukrainian military this year but also has a reputation for human rights abuses. Yulia lost her passport in a fire during combat. Several months ago, she gave birth in Ukraine but cannot get a birth certificate or medical care for her baby.”

Ahwwww! I can practically see FP reader’s eyes overflown with tears upon reading this touching story!

”…Gennady[‘s]… 35-year-old Russian who was a platoon commander on the front lines in eastern Ukraine this spring… legal stay in Ukraine ran out when he was in the hospital with an injury he acquired in May during a sortie into separatist territory in Pisky, near Donetsk. “At any moment, police can stop me on the street and deport me,” the former fighter with Right Sector, a nationalist group active near Donetsk, said by phone from an undisclosed city in Ukraine, where “kind people” are helping him out. “This is simply unfair to the guys who put their lives on the line for Ukraine’s independence.””

Wait a sec… A “Right Sektor” thug, who actively participated in the violation of Minsk-II ceasefire agreement… must draw our sympathy? Ah, dear FP – “Idiotocracy” was a movie – and satire. Not the actual prediction of the future. Uhm, right?

” Filippov, a self-described Buddhist with a short, dry cackle for a laugh,… was apolitical before the Ukraine conflict, but started following social media accounts of right-wing battalions as he became turned off by Russian state media coverage.

“I thought, ‘What sort of nonsense is this?’” he said of the made-up stories on Russian state television, which, among other outlandish claims, accused the Ukrainian army of crucifying children. When he began to argue about the war in Ukraine, his friends accused him of being “for the Americans” and turned away from him, he said. “Finally, my girlfriend said, ‘Why don’t you go ahead and fight for these fascists?’”

“I sat there and thought, ‘Why not?’” he said, crushing five sugar cubes into his green tea in a central Kiev café. He packed his special forces gear and went to Ukraine to join Right Sector, the group most vilified by Russian media. After spending time on the front lines near Donetsk, Filippov joined Azov, and he now works as an instructor at one of its training bases.

… Through the conflict, his idealism about Ukraine’s new pro-Western leadership wore off, while far-right ideology made an impression. He started quoting Hitler and Nietzsche on his social media pages.”

Okay – congrats. You just managed to hit the moral bottom here. Clearly, it’s all Putinist lies about Neo-Nazis in Ukraine fighting in armed forces. Yep.

” Commanders of Ukraine’s volunteer battalions had written to President Petro Poroshenko several times over the past year with lists of foreign fighters who deserve citizenship. They received no response from the president’s office. But it’s not like the government wasn’t opening its arms to foreigners. On Dec. 2, 2014, Poroshenko, who has the authority to grant citizenship by decree, handed out Ukrainian passports to several non-Ukrainians tasked with economic reform, including American investment banker Natalie Jaresko, now finance minister, and Lithuanian investment banker Aivaras Abromavicius, who became the country’s economy and trade minister.
“I want to also say hello to my fighting comrades,” Poroshenko said in a speech before the parliament in Kiev that day, by way of responding to the battalion commanders’ requests to naturalize their foreign fighters. “Your appeals to the president of Ukraine regarding granting Ukrainian citizenship to Russians and Belarusians who defended the honor of the country and independence of the state together with you — I will sign the decree to give them Ukrainian citizenship as promised,” he said to a standing ovation from jubilant lawmakers.

[…]

The foreigners resent the fact that Russians like Maria Gaidar, a former member of Russia’s opposition, was granted citizenship when she was made deputy head of the Odessa region. In May, Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, was flown into Odessa from exile in Brooklyn and made head of the region. He was also given citizenship. Along with Gaidar, Poroshenko gave a Ukrainian passport to Vladimir Fedorin, a Russian-born journalist, who edited the Ukrainian edition of Forbes. Overall, 707 people were granted Ukrainian citizenship by presidential decree in the first eight months of 2015, according to official statistics. Some of them are clearly handpicked government officials, but the list of names is not made public — raising further questions among those who fought.”

Poroshenko says utter bullshit. Pope is Catholic. News at 11!

” The Russian reports are largely exaggeration, but they contain a grain of truth. Neo-Nazis, some coming from as far away as Sweden, have been openly active in Azov, an ultra-right outlet, which has a Wolfsangel on its emblem and which U.S. congressmen have called a “neo-Nazi paramilitary militia.” Right Sector, which was instrumental in the Maidan protests and now also has a political party, has regularly clashed with police and denounced the West as causing “moral decay” in Ukraine through “homosexual propaganda.””

Oi vey – no way! “Ultra-right”, you admit? And what about Mukhachevo? And how come everybody decided to forgot a grenade explosion near Rada just a month and a half ago?

Well, personally, I think this is very good, halal article. It clearly shows any ideologically mind-fucked rabid creep about his/her potential fate should they volunteer to fight for a “Bright Future” of the “Free and Independent” Western moral pet of the week – against totalitarian Russia and its satellites, of course.

A clear victor here is, of course, sly and crafty Bat’ka who, sadly, has no Magadan, neither uranium mines to deal conclusively with the brain dead “zmagary” in his Bulba-Rus. So he allows them to go away and then, to quote the article “ominously promised to “deal with everyone fighting in Ukraine when they come back.””

I heard about them only last year – I have some relatives and family friends in Byelarus. Last year the enermous zmagar community has been increasing their ЧСВ by “celebrating” (mainly – online) the amazing “лицвин” vicotry over klyati Mosckali at Orsha.

Nuff said.

They also want the return of the old Byelarussian flag – aka a “salo slab”:

No, Pavlo! This is all Moskal propaganda! Prince and hetman of Lithuania Константiн Острозьких was true pure blooded лицвин! He annihilated Moskovites without Lithuanians and Polaks (8k Polaks and 5k Lithuanians) – only true byelarusians (less than 1k) and an awful lot of German artillerists… and other mercs (c. 5-7K) were in his army!

“The Italian Social Republic (Italian: Repubblica Sociale Italiana, RSI), informally known as the Republic of Salò (Italian: Repubblica di Salò pronounced [reˈpubblika di saˈlɔ]), was a puppet state of Nazi Germany during the later part of World War II (from 1943 until 1945). It was the second and last incarnation of the Fascist Italian state and it was led by Duce Benito Mussolini and his reformed Republican Fascist Party. The state declared Rome as its capital, but was de facto centered on Salò (hence its colloquial name), a small town on Lake Garda, near Brescia, where Mussolini and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was headquartered. The RSI exercised nominal sovereignty in northern and central Italy, but was largely dependent on German troops to maintain control …”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Social_Republic

Been there, done that – but it would be just like fascists to plunder and distort their own history because they have no sense of history.

Russia confirms what US press said yesterday about Jimmy Carter giving maps of ISIS positions to Russians.

“The Carter Center claims that they sent maps of the Islamic States location to Russia in an attempt to help improve their airstrike accuracy where U.S. officials have said that Russia has bombed rebels and CIA-backed groups rather than the Islamic State terrorist group.”

Streamed live on 22 Oct 2015
The 12th annual Valdai Discussion Club meeting in Russia’s Sochi has focused on international armed conflicts. Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking part in its final plenary session devoted to the crisis in the Middle East – LIVE UPDATES http://on.rt.com/6uf6

He’s wrong that peace drives technology. It’s war. War gave us steel. War turned the airplane from the toy of the rich into a vehicle for mass human transport. Millions of other examples. It’s why the ancient Greeks endowed Athena with the Portfolio of War and of Wisdom. The saddest of all the Ironies!

I would slightly quibble with that. It’s fear that gives us technology. Fear of the other energises spending on the technology of death.

The asian tigers grew to be tigers by being technological military dictatorships – S. Korea is a good example, let alone Taiwan, Singapore who were not far off. The point is that these leaders had a strategic vision that a good economy is needed and for that you need good education, supporting business at all levels – particularly small and start ups, not to mention state support for strategic industries.

The problem is in the West that there is this obsession of not spending money because it takes too long to make the profit back, so the free market and share bollox. It’s all about the bottom line, numbers on a spreadsheet, not are we going to have the people, skills and industry we need int twenty to thirty years time. In the UK, the Conservatives are cutting out a large part of the population out of this equation just to make the government the smallest it ever has been (and stay in power forever). People will simply up stix and go elsewhere, much like the Frogs did in the 1990s when hundreds of thousands of them left for the UK.

The Bismarckian Reich founded 1871 did the same: Realschulen provided technical education, the Ruhr coalfield and steelworks and the German aniline chemistry industry did the rest. Ironically, aniline dyes were first created by a British chemist, but the Germans soon took the lead in that field. Chemists and physicists and engineers were not professionals in Victorian UK, the only true and respected professions at that time in class-ridden UK being holy orders, law and medicine – everything else was deemed “trade”. Technical education, on the other hand, was respected in Germany, whereas in the UK they studied Latin and Greek grammar at public schools, read “Classics” at Oxbridge and quoted Cicero, Ovid, Demosthenes in the original tongue and at length in parliament.

The UK coal and iron industries got left behind by the new technologies developed in Germany by the the end of the 19th century and from 1870 the UK was and has been ever since in economic decline as regards industry and innovation. The “City”, however, with its insurance and investment and its money laundering activities, is still jogging along.

When for once a peace-time quantum leap was ventured in military technology in the UK, namely the revolutionary design at the turn of the 20th century of the oil-fired, turbine driven “Dreadnought” class capital warship, an act that immediately made all other capital sips of the then massive Royal Navy redundant, the UK had to import steel plate from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (from the Škoda steelworks in the present-day Czech Republic) because British steel was just not of high enough quality needed to manufacture the armour plates of the new Dreadnoughts. And every shell fired by the British Royal Artillery during WWI was equipped with a Krupp patented fuse.

You need to refine your conception of CXIX UK university education. Plenty of basic science done beyond Oxbridge.
Lord Kelvin?
Loads more apples out there. Even beyond the irregular institutions which would eventually be co opted into the formal system eventually.

The Scot Lord Kelvin was not a technician: the Englishman Sir Henry Bessemer was. Sir Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday were also English and leaders in their field, but the application of their research discoveries were developed in Germany. Siemens was developing electrical locomotive power in Germany when steam locomotives were still considered the sine qua non of railway motive power in the UK and when the internal combustion engine was being developed in Germany. Englishman Rutherford kicked off the atomic age in the UK, but because of the near bankrupt state of the UK as a result of WWI, the atomic age saw light of day in the USA. Englishmen Charles Babbage and mathematician George Boole”s work contributed largely to the development of computer science, but the technology that enabled the development of practical application of their ideas was largely developed in the USA and almost 100 years after their deaths.

I maintain that the application of scientific theory and the encouragement thereof were far more encouraged post-1870 in Germany and the USA than in the UK. The result of this was that the UK was left behind, e.g. they were still riveting ships together in the UK when ocean going vessels were being otherwise assembled far more rapidly elsewhere. Riveting iron and steel plate together is how they made steam locomotive boilers throughout most of the 19th century. Coal-fired, triple expansion, reciprocating marine engines were still being installed in UK ships after steam turbines had been developed by a British engineer, whose efforts the British admiralty studiously ignored. When US and European railway locomotive power was rapidly being changed from steam to electrical or diesel, the UK was stilll building steam railway locomotives – with riveted boilers.

The last British steam locomotive to operate on the British railway system was built as late as 1960. I last travelled on a scheduled steam locomotive hauled train in the UK in 1967. About five years ago there was built by enthusiasts a replica of a 1930s London and North Eastern Railway express steam locomotive. Because of present day safety regulations, the locomotive boiler had to be a precision welded one. The contract to construct the boiler was given to a German firm because none in the UK could undertake such work because of the lack of skilled workers in the UK capable of performing such welding.

I would agree war drives technology (and everything else) for western civilization which seems inherently predatory and expressionistic. I’m not so sure about other civilizational models.

Another consideration is that many of the best scientists and engineers are driven by a Utopian vision of a future of abundance and equality for all. However, such visions rarely are funded as the masters of money seek to crush that aspect of technology. Why? Every sociopaths (aka the ruling elite) knows that it better to rule in Hell rather than to serve in Heaven,

“On the possible transfer of anti-air defense missile systems by the U.S. to the anti-Assad forces, Mr. Putin said, “I hope this is not going to happen. This will create danger also for American pilots. American leaders are sane people, after all.”

“The territorial division of Syria [as a solution to the current crisis] is unacceptable. It is not going to resolve the conflict. The conflict will acquire a permanent character. Nothing good will come out of this,” Mr. Putin said.”

There’s the money shot, and with it die the last of Washington’s dreams about carving up Syria, because partition is almost always its go-to answer when it is talking about someone else’s country. It might prove handy in future to have a built-in opposition right there to rile up against any faction that pisses you off.

The US got too smarmy for its own good. It decided to essentially facilitate a Sunni Salafi caliphate to undermine Russia and Iran in Syria and Iraq and this has turned around and bit the US in the ass. There are too many crack smokers in the US imperial establishment who for some reason thought that getting rid of Saddam would somehow keep the balance of power intact. The 2003 invasion succeeded in liberating the Shi’ites from oppression by the Sunni minority and Iraq drifted rather rapidly towards Iran. So something had to be done and that was to fund Sunni extremists to carve up Iraq and shift the balance of power.

Putin said at Valdai that there was no thought in Russia at present for Russian air strikes in Iraq. But he also said Iraq had not asked, implying it would be considered if there are any changes in Iraq’s position. The USA is going to have to step up its game and might have to start actually bombing ISIS if it wants to hang onto its properties in the Middle East. New post on that coming out shortly, it’s almost done.

That is interesting! Amazing to see them adopt western habits so quickly – western militaries are typically heavily overborne with senior officers as well. 40 more Generals and Admirals is a significant commitment in pay, although Kiev is probably not paying them regularly. Since their fiscal plan seems to begin and end with “The west will give us money”, I daresay they will have to wait a bit longer.

Ha, ha!! Watch NBC tie itself in knots trying to report Putin’s astronomical popularity ratings without giving him any real credit at all. According to them, VTsIOM is “a respected pollster”…but “analysts have long questioned Russian approval polls.” They don’t want to say VTsIOM is making it up, so they put it on the people, who – in authoritarian states, and is anyone questioning the Stalinist stranglehold Putin exercises over his terrified people? – ratings may be overstated by as much as 20% (how convenient) because those polled are afraid it’ll be the gulag if they give the wrong answer. The daily dilemma of how to portray what is really happening in Russia, without saying anything remotely positive.

They don’t mention that Putin could actually spot them the 20% they fabricate, and still be so far above Obama that he would have to correct for a time-zone change to call him on the phone.

Let me tell you an anecdote. Here in Oz land I’ve befriended a Russian academic. One day I started probing her political views, and found her quite vague. I correctly guessed that she was approving of Putin. When I made it clear that I am a Putin supporter, she was really surprised, and commented that here in Australia none of her acquaintances shares our views.

This is to say that it might well be that many Russian expats fear social ostracism if they express their “pro-regime” position.

Heck it’s the same for me. I loathe Berlusconi, but it’s cristal clear that:
1) he’s been overthrown by the USA + EU
2) the new governments have done much worse under every aspect I could care as a citizen.

However, I keep these considerations to myself, because my Italian colleagues are Manichean, in that there are only two possible positions: either you think Berlusconi is the worst, or you voted for him.

Berlusconi had to go because he was too chummy with Putin and with Merkel’s rivals. Washington wants Merkel around forever, because it can turn her on and off like a tap. Indeed, Berlusconi’s successor did little to improve Italy’s lot, but Washington didn’t care about Berlusconi’s half-million-dollar wristwatch or the widening income inequality during his reign or his bunga-bunga parties. The last straw was his defense of Putin.

Those are the same idiots who went to Moscow for the Sochi Olympics, purposely downloaded every piece of unsecured software they could find, and declared that the KGB was hacking every visitor to Russia.

The founder of the organization to which these shits belong is now being feted at Westminster.

It was stated recently here that it would take at least 20 years to rid the Ukraine of russophobia.

The present virulent Ukrainian russophobia was at least 20 years in gestation, of that I am sure: as I have mentioned before, I lived with many Ukrainian students in the Soviet Union, in Voronezh, Russia, and there was absolutely no hatred of Russia and the Russians exhibited by them.

No, Russia did nothing to counter the incipient Nazi threat.
And Karl is right, that this was a gross oversight. A mistake that will not be made again, I dare say.
In Russia’s defense, it was just never part of the culture to spend that much time trying to influence other people. Oh sure, Soviets had their “Friendship Clubs” in Warsaw Pact countries. But most of the time, they were just phoning it in.

I don’t suppose the massive subsidies that the USSR and then the Russian Federation poured into the Ukraine, as well as the Russian offer made to that benighted land that even Yanukovich couldn’t refuse when the alternative was to accept the swinging terms of “associate” membership of the EU, was in any way intended to counter the activities of Western wannabes in the Ukraine and their support organizations, were they?

The present virulent Russophobia is not necessarily widespread in Ukraine – it is cherry-picked and rebroadcast ceaselessly in the Anglospheric media because to do so serves the purpose of splitting Ukraine off from Russia. Even months after Maidan, when the promised EU paradise did not materialize, it was still possible to see clips of people taking over the microphone at demonstrations in western Ukraine to say, what shit you talk; Russia is our friend. Not the norm, admittedly, but not that unusual either. The solution I would like to see is for Ukraine and Russia to resume something like their previous relationship, and for all the young radicals to leave in disgust for the EU and the USA. Not here, because we have enough diaspora radicals already.

As this Editorial was being processed, The Moscow Times made some major announcements. The newspaper will, in the future, appear only once a week, rather than daily. However, it shall retain its web presence.

Meanwhile, the paper’s editor, Nabi Abdullaev has resigned.

If MT ceases publication, it will not be missed. I have noticed over the past few years that its “freebie” presence at hotel receptions, Irish/English “pubs”, corporation reception areas, e.g. Rosneft, BP, KPMG etc., has grown noticeably less.

Good riddance, say I as well. For as long as I have read it – occasionally, although I once read it daily in the mistaken impression that it was a real voice of Moscow rather than an implanted political agitator – which must be more than 15 years now, it has been an outpost of Washington and a hectoring western irritant with little or nothing constructive to say about the country which hosts it.

Funny, though; I remember writing – emailing, actually – Jon Hellevig in Moscow more than a year ago, to ask him if he thought anyone there would be interested in starting up an English-language newspaper to counter the rubbish in the Moscow Times. He was a little dubious, but shortly thereafter Russia Insider started up under Charles Bausman, whom I did not know at the time. And now it seems to be doing very well, where The Moscow Times is rudderless and adrift.

Yeah; I found it – it was longer ago than I thought: October 10th, 2013. I said,

Say, Jon; has anyone ever given any thought to starting an English-language newspaper in Moscow to compete with that mendacious rag, The Moscow Times? Would there be much of a market for it, do you think? Would it be very expensive? What sort of licensing would be required? Just curious. Best regards,

Mark

To which he replied;

Mark,

You ask the right guy. I know quite a lot about this. A friend of mine, an Indian guy, was running until some 8 years ago a competing journal, Russia journal. But it was not financial viable, because he did not have any support from neither Russian government or the CIA , the latter true for Moscow Times. MT is owned by the biggest Finnish media holding, Sanoma, which publishes a monopoly daily in Finland. They are through and through anti-Russian.

Moscow Times does not make any money only spends, that is the problem for the competition also. So perhaps an internet thing.

There is the competitor Moscow News, that is owned by RIA (the government) but it is even worse than Moscow Times. I read MT daily but MN I don’t even pick up from the shelves, it is so horrible.

MT is actually quite a good expat journal in the general content espcecially how it covers business and Russia in general, you can stay ajour with it, that is, when a reader like I (one in 10,000) disregards the aggressive anti-Putin, anti-Russian lying, and most of the op-ed pieces

Yes, I remember that Russia Journal and I thought it not too bad, but it didn’t have the style of the yellow press and didn’t seem opinionated with columns by “native Muscovites” and Latynina, Felgenhauer etc.

As regards Moscow News, it wasn’t anywhere as near as bad as MT, in my opinion.

Mrs. Tintin wrote an interesting column for it, in which she described her walks around interesting places in the city. She didn’t use her married name though. I always read her stuff and often followed up on her strolls.

A Russian bloke I worked for years ago – the year I married, in fact:1997 – asked me a few times if I thought an English language only radio station would be a worthwhile business venture. His business at the time was pagers, something I have never seen in operation and will now probably only ever see in science and technology museums. I told him I thought such a venture was viable, but I think he didn’t have enough readies to bribe Yeltsin’s telecoms minister or whoever allocated frequencies.

In the end, an all English radio station, Moscow FM, did eventually start up in 2012.

Channel Content – the most useful information about cultural events, work hubs, weather, hotel and tourism sector. Moscow highlights, traffic, overview of the city’s press, concerts of all styles and so on. Every sight of Moscow culture life in out reports.

На что променяли Знамя ПобедыWhat they have traded the Victory Banner forIf the Victory banner can be see in the first photo, then what can we see in the second photo?

On October 19 there came into force an Odessa district court order banning the Soviet Victory Banner and from now on, displaying that red banner on May 9 and 10 April, the Day of the Liberation of Odessa, will be considered a crime. A symbol of victory over fascism has been banned; the yellow and blue rags brought from the so-called “ATO zone” are a symbol of heroism. As for me, this is quite a clear demonstration of the changes that have taken place in the Ukrainian state.

I prefer to think of them as changes that have been forced upon the Ukrainian state. And there is no better way to make something attractive than to forbid it, while glorifying in its place something which is unpopular. The ATO is not broadly popular in Odessa.

“Read the post of the Russian citizen Aleksandr Volkov, that he had fought for the Ukraine and may be expelled to Russia, where he faces torture and death in prison.

Called him. Clarified the facts of his history and biography. I checked the information about his voluntary service in the support group of the National Guard regiment ‘Azov’.

Contacted the ‘Azov’ regimental command – asked for a character reference..

The answer was not long in coming.

‘Aleksandr Volkov was with us in the division from 26.04.2015. He was wounded in the battle at Shirokino. Of positive character. A worthy fighter and decent man.’

It is clear that after Aleksandr has voluntarily participated in the defence of the Ukraine from Russian fascist troops and that there is no way he can come back to Russia until they have risen from their knees there and thrown off the yoke of Putin’s regime.

Met Aleksandr Valov today and introduced him to the head of the Ukraine Migration Service, Maxim Sokolyuk.

Put our heads together so as to find a way of giving Aleksandr legal residence status on the territory of the Ukraine and establishing a systematic method for granting the status of political refugee to people from Russia.

The extradition of Aleksandr Valov was not on the agenda that day.

Yes, this lad has had a number of criminal cases made against him in Russia as a result of his social activism and opposition to the general support for Putin there.

So what? They have made a criminal case against me in Russia as well. So I’m doing everything right. Every time I manage to help to make a difference, I know that I am not living my days in vain.”

From Valov’s vKontakte pages:

“Many are surprised that I am a Russian nationalist who has come over to the Ukrainians whilst cursing the Sovoks, who have turned up in another country and are killing people. Listen, lads: to be a nationalist does not mean being a fan of the braying mob and it is not obligatory to be one of the sheeple…”

“All my life I have been a European…”

“All my my life I have dreamt of a ‘Russian Maidan’. I am very proud of the Ukrainians and that they have had the spirit to do this…”

“I chose the Ukraine because here the majority believes that ‘Putin is a prick’. And they, unlike us, have been able to overcome and throw out the Soviet abomination…”

“Some are interested in the question (and the authorities have allowed this misinformation) of whether I haven’t really moved here to fight for Putin’s separatists in ‘Novorossiya’. No,I haven’t – because, firstly: I don’t know of such a country; secondly, because the motherfuckers do not fight …”

“The great Russian people are either sleeping or lying drunk in the gutters…”

Me, too. The more he struggles to explain the nobility and selflessness of his actions, the more thoroughly he incriminates himself. Thank God for their fascination with trophy photographs. If I were him, I would think I would have a difficult time convincing prosecutors that it was not the opportunity to strut about like a little Standartenführer which drew me to The Ukraine rather than the sweet song of freedom for all.

Well, in the end Ukrainians have their wish – they are free. Free to be destitute and to beg for handouts, free to have most of those handouts diverted into the accounts of oligarchs just like before, only now with the silent assent of the free world because Ukraine Is Free.

Interesting to read his battle assessments as well – “No,I haven’t – because, firstly: I don’t know of such a country; secondly, because the motherfuckers do not fight …” The Ukie Army had quite the field day at first, and inexorably pushed the easterners back to the very rim of Ukraine, but that was before the Punishment Battalions really got into the game, which was not until the regular army started losing. And the volunteers made a dramatic difference – their side lost much faster and more humiliatingly. I think there might be a chair for Valov at the U.S. Army War College.

Published on 3 Nov 2015
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister Adel AL-Jubeir spoke to euronews’ Daleen Hassan after the talks in Vienna last week (30 October). The talks were focused on Syria, but also addressed issues in Yemen.

“We have maintained that Bashar al-Assad has no role in Syria’s future and that he must leave at some point in this process. So we have always called for this and our position has not changed. We have also called for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Syria, we believe for example that the Iranian forces are occupying forces in Syria. This is unacceptable. We have reiterated this position today during the meeting.”

“There was an agreement at the meeting with regards to a commitment to a Syria whose territorial integrity is maintained, a future Syria that would be democratic in which the rights of all its minorities and citizens are protected. There was agreement on the need to provide for more humanitarian access so that we can provide humanitarian supplies to the Syrian people.”

Is that so? What would be the reaction in Saudi Arabia if, say, Licthenstein said that the next ruler of Saudi Arabia could not be from the House of Saud? Get it? You don’t get to make commentary on how the democratic process works when you don’t have the first fucking clue about it because you are an eternal monarchy. Nobody is interested in hearing philosophizing or policy statements on democracy from the King. The proper response whenever Saudi Arabia makes any statement on who should be the leader of this country or that country is to laugh loudly.